LETTER: Debate welcome

In reference to the article of Feb. 10, "Creationism vs. evolution debate heats up in Europe," I welcome the discussion.

It's been too long that the media have heavily presented the evolutionary theory as true, as opposed to the scientific evidence that refutes that theory.

To give some examples, Darwin himself said in "The Origin of Species," "As by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed. Why do we not find them imbedded in the crust of the earth? Why is all nature in confusion instead of being as we see them, well defined species? ... The explanation lies, however, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record." (In other words, not enough fossils were unearthed.)

But it's now well over a century since Darwin made that statement, and we've unearthed thousands of tons of fossils from all over the world. What does all this massive amount of evidence show?

David Raup, an evolutionist, reviews the evidence for us. He has been the curator of the famous Field Museum of Natural History of Chicago.

That museum houses 20 percent of all fossil species known, so Mr. Raup is in a position to speak

with authority.

He has written this: "Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge about fossil record has been greatly expanded "¦ Ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time "¦ some of the classic cases of Darwin's change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information."

(From "Conflicts between Darwin and Paleontology," 1979 and "Geology and Creationism," 1982, both from the National Museum Bulletins.)

Professor N. Heribert-Nilsson of Lund University, Sweden, has studied the subject of evolution for over 40 years and has commented on this problem of missing links.

He said in a Life magazine article in 1982, "It is not even possible to make a caricature of evolution out of paleobiological facts. The fossil material is now so complete that the lack of transitional series cannot be explained by the scarcity of the materials. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled."

I welcome a fair and equal representation of both sides of the controversy.

RICHARD SETTEDUCATI

Mattapoisett

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